Cleansing Ritual
by Imadra Blue
Summary: The quiet moments between battles hurt the most, for the roar of death no longer drowns out the pain. Unrequited slash.


**Pairing:** Anakin/Obi-Wan  
**Disclaimer:** Star Wars and all its characters are property of Lucasfilm Ltd. No copyright infringement is intended.  
**Notes:** For Tenillypo as a holiday gift. Thank you to Luthe for the help with breeding plotbunnies. And many, many thanks to Beatrice Otter and her excellent beta reading.

...

Pieces of battle droids still littered the streets of Hitejin City. Anakin kicked a blackened head out of his way, listening to it clatter into the gutter, joining other heads, arms, legs, and torsos. He stared down at the collection of robotic body parts, wishing that the side of the battle he had fought on had been as bloodless.

On the other side of the street, a light burned in the window of a half-destroyed house. Anakin saw the silhouette of people moving inside through a dirty window. Their weeping could be heard through the broken door. Anakin bowed his head. He should have been able to do more, save more… if only he had arrived an hour earlier.

This had been his motto since the war began: if only he'd been there sooner.

Anakin continued walking down the street. Street lamps flickered as he passed them, as if the light did battle, too—with the darkness of the Giresian night. Gires had no moons, and the smog from its primitive industrial facilities obscured the stars. Gires was a tiny, dirty planet, backwards and unremarkable but for the production of the durasteel that the Separatists craved for their machines of war.

Now what was left of Gires's facilities would produce durasteel for the Republic forces. Gires would remain under martial law, led by a battalion of clone troopers. To the Giresians, the outcome of the war meant no difference. Though Padmé was thousands of light years away, Anakin could almost sense her disapproval.

Perhaps that was why he had not tried to comm her. He and Obi-Wan had been given two days of leave before they had to rejoin a passing Republic convoy, but Anakin had gone no further than dialing Padmé's number and never pressing the "call" button. He could not bear to see her eyes, judging every action he took.

Instead, Anakin had spent most the past day helping people bury their loved ones and moving the wounded to the over-crowded field hospital. He tried to tell himself that he helped the Giresians out of compassion, but he knew that it was guilt.

Anakin still didn't know whether it had been Separatist or Republic forces that had nearly destroyed Hitejin City. He didn't even want to know. The answer frightened him, so the confusion of battle remained a tangled mess in his mind by choice. Everything about this war was a tangled mess, a constant background noise of other people's pain and agony. Not even the loss of Anakin's arm could compare to the misery he faced on every planet he visited now.

He wondered how Obi-Wan had fared. At dusk, Obi-Wan had disappeared from the field hospital where he had been helping treat the wounded, only telling Anakin that he would be back later that night. Obi-Wan's abrupt and total disappearance was unusual—he was usually always at Anakin's side.

When Anakin reached the freshly rebuilt Hitejin bar, he sensed the presence of his best friend inside. Obi-Wan's feelings were an indiscernible miasma, blocking Anakin from its depths all while hinting that Obi-Wan had fared no better than he since the battle had been won.

Though Anakin did not like to refer to any battle that had claimed over fifty thousand lives as a victory.

Anakin reckoned that the bar had been rebuilt within a few hours after the battle. He did not understand why the bar was the first place to be rebuilt, even before the hospital, but then, drink had never been his vice. Anakin could hear a clamor of over-loud voices inside. Smoke rolled out from under the door, and dim light poured onto the flickering street.

The moment that Anakin pushed open the swinging doors, the sour, sharp smell of alcohol and death sticks assaulted his nose. Men with bandaged stumps sat on barstools, brooding over polymer cups filled with alcohol. Women with freshly stitched faces handed out slim, black tubes filled with a heavy narcotic. In one of the charred booths lining the wall, there was the unmistakable movement of two people having sex. The table beside them rattled with every thrust.

Anakin walked past the rutting couple and towards the back, where he knew he would find Obi-Wan. He had to wave smoke out of his face to see, and the smell of alcohol grew stronger with every step. After pushing and weaving his way through the crowd, Anakin found Obi-Wan sitting the corner booth.

Never had Anakin seen Obi-Wan in such a state. Obi-Wan seemed mostly asleep, even as he brought a polymer cup filled with Solnar Rouge to his lips—Solnar Rouge was the strongest drink in this quadrant of the galaxy, the southern equivalent of a Tatooine Sunrise. Empty cups littered the table. Trickles of Solnar Rouge leaked out of some of the tipped-over cups. The red liquid could easily be mistaken for blood under the weak lighting.

Obi-Wan's hair was a mess, no doubt because of the girl who kept running her fingers through it and telling him how pretty he was. She seemed more alert than he, but no more sober. She did not wear a top, but her small, sagging breasts evoked no desire. Her arms bore the track marks of a long-time death stick user. She mumbled something unintelligible as Anakin approached her and shrank back into the corner.

"Master."

Obi-Wan did not respond. He continued to sip at his drink, dribbling fluid into his unkempt beard.

"Master!" Anakin snapped.

Obi-Wan set the cup down on the table and leaned back against the booth. His head tilted back, and he suddenly began to snore.

Anakin sighed. He pulled Obi-Wan up and nearly passed out from the smell. Obi-Wan clearly hadn't bathed since before the battle, and his musky body odor mixed with the powerful smell of alcohol. "_Vench my skug!_" Anakin swore.

Obi-Wan eyes moved beneath their lids, but did not open. Anakin sighed and held his breath as he dumped Obi-Wan over his shoulder.

"Ine no manga wanga uoo?" Obi-Wan said in a language that Anakin had never heard before and would bet his lightsaber did not exist.

"I think you've had enough 'manga wanga uoo,' Master. We need to let you dry out."

"No!" The topless girl flung herself forward and grasped Obi-Wan's wrist. "He's mine! I found him here! I've been taking care of him!"

Anakin pried her fingers off Obi-Wan. "And as much as I appreciate that, he doesn't belong to you." Obi-Wan sneezed in what Anakin hoped was agreement.

The girl's eyes filled tears. "But I like him. He has all his arms and legs, and he's much nicer than the last soldier I had."

Anakin became painfully aware of the piece of metal attached to his right elbow. The skin around the cybernetic connections itched. "Yeah, isn't he lucky."

"Can't I keep him?" the girl whispered.

"Sorry, but no."

The girl burst into tears. Her eyeliner poured down her face, reminding Anakin of the charred corpses he had buried earlier that day. Pity stirred in his chest, and Anakin twitched his fingers in her direction, guiding the Force through her mind.

"You should go to the field hospital and ask for a detox."

The girl looked up at him, blinking away ink-stained tears. "I should go to the field hospital and ask for a detox." She stood up and shuffled away.

Anakin watched her walk for a moment, then followed her out of the bar. They parted ways a few blocks down the street, as he headed to the small clone trooper base at the edge of Hitejin City.

The mobile bunkroom's door slid open at the wave of Anakin's hand, and Anakin carried Obi-Wan inside. Inside, the filtered air was clean, and Anakin sighed in relief, his nose clearing of noxious smells. He headed to the back and propped Obi-Wan against a wall. Obi-Wan made a small noise of protest, but still did not wake.

"Come on, Master. We need to wash you up. I've smelled bantha asses that were less offensive than you right now."

"Ungh," Obi-Wan retorted.

Strong red light poured in from the base camp, casting a bloody pallor on Obi-Wan's pale flesh as Anakin peeled off his filthy tunics. Anakin checked for track marks. While Obi-Wan despised spice, there was no telling what that skin-clinger sitting next to him might have done to him in his drunken stupor.

Obi-Wan shivered from the cold, his eyes slowly opening as Anakin bent down to peel off his trousers and boots. Anakin didn't worry about checking for sexual diseases—the girl had probably clung to Obi-Wan because he was the only male in the bar not looking to fuck her brains out. In any case, with as much liquor as he had poured down his gullet, Obi-Wan wouldn't have been able to get hard.

"An… Ana… in," Obi-Wan moaned, his hands tangling with Anakin's fingers. The smell that the movement produced made Anakin grimace, but the touch set his scalp on fire.

"Yes, Master, it's Anakin."

Anakin stood up and carried Obi-Wan into the tiny 'fresher. Despite his considerable musculature, Obi-Wan looked very small as he stood in the shower, unclothed and shivering. He blinked up at the shower spray as Anakin turned it on, his trembling not even halting when the water turned warm. There was something about his sudden weakness that Anakin found compelling. He wanted to fold Obi-Wan in his arms and promise him it would be all right, but didn't.

It would never be all right. If Obi-Wan Kenobi, the greatest Jedi Knight of them all, had gone and drank himself into a fog, it was only going to get worse. Anakin had a difficult time reconciling Obi-Wan's drunkenness with Obi-Wan's usual stolid behavior. He could only believe that Obi-Wan had done this because Obi-Wan knew he would have the time and the space to get drunk, and he knew that Anakin would take care of him afterwards.

Obi-Wan suddenly vomited. Some of it splashed on Anakin's boots, and all of it looked like the bloody Solnar Rouge. He apparently hadn't eaten much that day. Anakin simply let the foul liquid swirl down the drain, along with the dirt and dried blood on Obi-Wan's wounded bicep. He brushed Obi-Wan's teeth and tenderly washed Obi-Wan clean, making sure to soap him thoroughly.

It would take more than one soaping to make Obi-Wan smell human again. Anakin peeled off his own clothing. Anakin stepped into the shower with Obi-Wan and soaped the older man up again, being more thorough this time. Anakin had once thought water more precious than any substance in the galaxy, and he still did. Water was the only thing pure enough to wash away their sins.

There should have been something erotic about two people, naked, in a shower. It certainly wasn't a moment that Anakin would ever discuss with Padmé, as he knew she would never understand the how complicated his feelings for Obi-Wan were. And Anakin knew there was some erotic element mixed into his feelings at the moment, but it was muted, just like everything else he felt. The anger, the frustration, the pain, the guilt, the sorrow, the lust—it all paled beside his exhaustion.

The Jedi Masters warned that war bred a hatred that led to the dark side, but Anakin simply felt as if he were choking from Death's grip, hovering near unconsciousness.

"What are you going to do the next time you get people killed and I'm not here to clean you up?" Anakin whispered. "What are you going to do without me?"

Obi-Wan only moaned again and wrapped his arms around Anakin's shoulder, nuzzling the flesh as he sagged against Anakin's weight.

Anakin closed his eyes and held Obi-Wan tightly. A part of him wished Obi-Wan always fell apart like this, that Obi-Wan always needed him. Another part of him understood what Obi-Wan's drinking binge really meant, however. Obi-Wan fell apart only because he knew he could, fully intending to recover by tomorrow. It was a controlled weakness, a brief indulgence. If Anakin were not there to clean him up, then Obi-Wan would probably not have done it.

Anakin was not as needed as he would like to be.

But with Obi-Wan's trembling body pressed against his, lips pressed to his collarbone, breath warming his skin, Anakin could at least pretend.

...

The red lights from outside still lit up the darkened bunkroom, making the white sheets of the empty bunk on the other side of the room look macabre.

Beside Anakin, Obi-Wan stirred, his smooth skin creating a pleasant friction against Anakin's skin. Anakin had not bothered to dress either of them after the shower. He knew Obi-Wan wouldn't say anything about it in the morning.

Obi-Wan stirred a little more, and his arms crept around Anakin's chest, bringing with him the fading scent of soap. His lips pressed against Anakin's ear. "Thank you," he whispered, then rested his head on Anakin's chest.

Anakin stroked Obi-Wan's still-damp hair and smiled.

As Anakin waited for the camp's cook to finish packaging up his and Obi-Wan's breakfast, he reflected that he would have to eventually tell Obi-Wan about Padmé. And how he was going to leave the Jedi for her after the war. He did not relish that conversation.

Mostly because he knew Obi-Wan would take it far too well.

The cook handed Anakin the package. Anakin thanked him and headed back to the bunkroom. Obi-Wan was still sleeping in his bunk, huddled by the wall. The dent from Anakin's head remained on the pillow.

Anakin set the food on the small table and sat down beside Obi-Wan. He ran his fingers down Obi-Wan's bare back, exposed by the slipping of the sheet. A part of him knew that he should tell Padmé about the unnatural heat that spread through his body every time he touched Obi-Wan, about the tiny insignificant indiscretions they shared. But if Obi-Wan never spoke about the showers they shared or the times they slept beside each other, then Anakin would not, either.

Obi-Wan rolled over, and his eyes fluttered open. He stared up at Anakin, his eyes an odd mix of gray and green this morning. The bright sunlight in their room did not seem bother him. Anakin envied him that, as too many fizzy drinks, regardless of alcohol content, would give Anakin a hangover.

"I brought you breakfast."

"Thank you." He paused for a long moment, clearly trying to gather his thoughts before speaking. "I'm sorry about last night."

"Don't worry about it."

"I do worry about it. It was not right. I… after all those people I saw in the field hospital, I kept thinking about how many more would never pass through there."

These were things Anakin did not like to think about, but he did not stop Obi-Wan's train of thought.

"Sometimes I think about all the people who will die soon, maybe even us. And then I think about all the people who have died already." Obi-Wan cleared his throat, and Anakin wondered if he was thinking about Qui-Gon. "It won't happen again."

Anakin ran his fingers over Obi-Wan's beard. "It's all right. I don't mind taking care of you."

Obi-Wan's brow furrowed, but he said nothing as he stroked Anakin's cheek.

"You need to shave," Anakin said after a long moment.

"I only need a trim."

"Why don't you shave it off? Scared someone will see your real face again?"

Obi-Wan sighed. "Don't start. Not this morning. We have to go back tonight, and I want to relax until then."

Anakin closed his eyes, soaking up the tiny thrills from Obi-Wan's touch. Obi-Wan's fingers skittered down his neck, then danced away, falling still on the bed. Anakin sometimes wondered if Obi-Wan ever wanted more than the occasional light petting, but it was difficult to tell.

"Do you want to… talk about anything?" Anakin asked hopefully.

"I don't think there's anything more to talk about."

Of course he wouldn't. Obi-Wan probably attached no meaning to these careless moments. Perhaps he never noticed how Anakin froze under his touch, battling a desire for more. Apparently, Anakin's erection occasionally pressing against his thigh at night did not concern him.

"Why do you do this, Master?"

Obi-Wan drew away, sitting up and turning his face from Anakin. "I already told you that I—"

"I wasn't talking about the drinking. I know why you did that." Anakin grabbed Obi-Wan's hand and pressed it to his chest. He could feel his own heart thumping beneath Obi-Wan's palm. "Why do you do this?"

Obi-Wan drew his hand back slowly. There was a slight tremble to it. He said nothing as he stood up and walked to the 'fresher.

Anakin sighed and laid down on the bed, listening to the sound of Obi-Wan showering.

...

Anakin and Obi-Wan sat on an old rock, waiting for the gleam of lights in the dark sky that told them their transport had arrived. Behind them, Hitejin City glittered like light on sewage water.

"Is there anything you wanted to talk about?" Obi-Wan asked after a long stretch of silence, turning to Anakin with a serious expression. It wasn't cold, but they sat close together, thigh pressed comfortably against thigh.

Anakin studied Obi-Wan's face. There were so many things he wanted to talk about. So many confessions about Padmé, his marriage, his plans to leave the Jedi, how the war suffocated his very soul. So many questions about if Obi-Wan felt as suffocated, if he loved Anakin, if he ever wanted more than the occasional backstroking from Anakin.

"No. I guess there's not much to say."

Obi-Wan nodded and looked up at the sky. Lights finally twinkled in the black sky, growing brighter with every passing second. Their transport had arrived.

"I'm sure it will get better soon," Obi-Wan said.

"Of course it will."

Though Obi-Wan smiled and squeezed his shoulder, Anakin sensed that Obi-Wan didn't believe that anymore than he did.

__

...

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

- Plato 


End file.
